In an optical communication system, it is generally necessary to couple an optical fiber to an opto-electronic transmitter, receiver or transceiver device and, in turn, to couple the device to an electronic system such as a switching system or processing system. These connections can be facilitated by modularizing the transceiver device. An opto-electronic transceiver module includes an opto-electronic light source, such as a laser, and an opto-electronic light receiver, such as a photodiode, and may also include various electronic circuitry associated with the laser and photodiode. For example, driver circuitry can be included for driving the laser in response to electronic signals received from the electronic system. Likewise, receiver circuitry can be included for processing the signals produced by the photodiode and providing output signals to the electronic system. An opto-electronic transceiver module also commonly includes optics such as a lens for focusing light emitted from the end of an optical fiber upon the photodiode and a lens for collimating light emitted by the laser into an end of an optical fiber. Some opto-electronic transceiver modules provide a number of parallel optical transmit and receive channels by including a number of light sources, light receivers, lenses and associated electronic circuitry.
Lens devices that include an array of lenses can be used in opto-electronic transceiver modules having multiple parallel optical transmit and receive channels. Such a lens device can be made of molded thermoplastic and have a number of lenses unitarily molded into the plastic body along with features that aid mounting the lens device in a transceiver module. Such a lens device can be economically manufactured in bulk quantities. In the manufacturing process, lens devices are released from molds and, at some point during the manufacturing process, dropped onto a table or conveyer belt for inspection, further processing, packaging or other purposes. For quality control purposes, human inspectors can look through magnifiers at lens devices scattered about on the inspection table and pick out any defective lens devices. Lens devices that pass such inspection are commonly stored in bulk bins or bags for further processing or packaging. In some instances, automated machine-vision inspection systems can aid such quality control inspection. Lens devices that are manufactured to be inspected by such automated machine-vision inspection systems can include fiducial markings to aid recognition by such inspection systems.
A common problem during the bulk manufacture, storage and handling of such lens devices is that some of the lenses become scratched or otherwise optically impaired as a result of rubbing against surfaces on a table, in a storage bin, etc. It would be desirable to minimize the likelihood of such damage.